English/Latvia 100

Latvia 100 is a project which consists of two stages: first, creating a list on 100 most important articles on Latvia that Estonian Wikipedia should definitely have, and second, to write and improve those articles to some decent, informative level.

Estonians actually know shamefully little about their southern neighbours. Most of us can't name five living Latvian writers. Nor three. It would be good enough to get one. We're short of Latvian speakers, news are usually intermediated by English or Russian sources, and we recognize Latvian culture and history by and large to the extent that we have it in common. Estonia has its face towards north, and its back towards south. Of course, Finns are our language relatives, but Latvians are our genetic relatives. Anyway, it's a harsh mistake that should be corrected, and Wikipedia can definitely help in that matter.

As this world is not always ideal, Latvia 100 could consist of relevant themes rather than existing articles in Latvian, English or Russian. While currently available articles would be of great help, we can write also overviews of matters that are not specifically handled in a suitable form in other languages.

It would have been perfect if this list of 100 most important articles on Latvia would have been composed by Latvians. We have been in contact with Latvian Wikipedians and unfortunately, their answer was this: "Latvian Wikipedia does not explictly strive to cover Latvia, we have plenty of articles on topic, of course, but we can't really provide an overview list. There are other portals dedicated to the theme like latvia.lv and probably also latvia.travel covers most important topics and places." Hence, we have to manage by ourselves. We still have to write most of those texts anyway, as Latvia is close to us and it its matters should be explained differently to Estonians than to, say, Americans or Chinese. We even have our own names for many places and people there.

It would be best if we could have this list by the end of spring, so we could announce a Latvian Summer in Estonian Wikipedia, count the results in the autumn and, if necessary, organize some event to gather interested folks and write on Latvia in an organized manner.

For comparison, we have composed a list of 100 articles or themes on Estonia that most other Wikipedias should have if they want to cover Estonia a little more systematically. It is available in Estonian here: w:Vikipeedia:Eesti 100, and in a bit longer form here: w:Vikipeedia:Eesti 200 (at the moment, actually 187).